Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 5.1. Biomass production in Northern Europe in relation to total energy use.
Cereal including
Other agro
Energy
straw
than cereal
Forestry
use
Prod-Use
2008/2009
[TWh]
[TWh]
[TWh]
[TWh]
[TWh]
Austria
56
204
63
332
−
10
Belgium
36
103
11
586
−
436
Denmark
110
196
9
190
125
Esthonia
9
60
36
54
51
Finland
46
188
359
353
240
Germany
537
1207
179
3353
−
1429
Netherlands
22
153
6
797
−
617
Norway
10
86
163
297
−
37
Ireland
22
275
12
150
159
Latvia
18
135
54
45
162
Lithuania
41
189
35
92
173
Poland
322
1108
151
979
602
Sweden
57
258
457
496
275
Switzerland
11
100
20
267
−
136
UK
240
1128
47
2085
−
669
Russian Federation
1027
16249
13107
6868
23515
Belarus
88
661
140
281
607
and top and 15% stub and roots). This corresponds to 75% as stems. The amount is probably con-
servative as it assumes Scandinavian conditions all over northern Europe. The column “energy
use” from 2008 is using ktonne oil equivalents from the World-Bank data
×
10MWh/tonnes o.e.
The last column adds all the biomass together as TWh/y and reduces the energy use as TWh/y.
As can be seen the more populous countries like Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and UK have
negative balances, but most of the others have a positive balance. For Russia the surplus is enor-
mous, and if we take for the whole northern European region we have a surplus of 22,577TWh/y!
This corresponds to much more than the total energy use in EU27, which is 16,000TWh/y, and
a significant portion of the global energy use which is approximately 150,000TWh/year. Russia
obviously has a very important capacity within the energy sector also when the oil and gas has
run out! The nomenclature in Table 5.1 is as follows: TWh/y of cereals including also the straw is
the first column. In the second column, we have TWh/y of other agricultural crops than cereals.
In the third column is TWh/y of forestry production including stems, bark, roots and tops. The
fifth column shows the energy use for each country according to the official figures. In the last
column we have the difference between the total production from all biomass compared to the
official energy use. A positive figure means a surplus of available energy from biomass, while a
negative figure means a deficiency. As can be seen Germany has a high deficiency while Russia
has a very high surplus. It is interesting to note that 10 out of 17 countries have surpluses!
In Table 5.2, we also have collected the base data, which has been used for the calculations
in Table 5.1. An interesting fact is that the sum of (forestry
+
agricultural area
+
arable area) for
several countries is higher than the total land area registered for the country!
The cereal production differs a lot between different countries. This is seen in Table 5.3. To
some extent, this depends on climatic issues, but probably also due to other conditions that can be
affected by selecting better seeds, more efficient distribution of fertilizers/nutrients and perhaps
introducing other crops than those dominating today.
Poland should have conditions to produce twice the amount compared to today, similar to
Germany. Generally, it should be interesting to investigate special energy crops as seen in
Chapter 1, or direct the selection of seeds towards the goal to enhance not only the grain produc-
tion, but also the total biomass production. It should be possible to have another two tonnes dry
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